Monday, October 31, 2011

Today Luke & I went to the shops to look for some new things for our move! We are going to get all new things like a bed, bed sides, lounge, coffee table & tv cabinet. I managed to twist Luke's arm on getting a white bed frame. And he hates white furniture, which is makes things harder to compromise because I LOVE white furniture. When we first moved in together a couple of years ago, I bought our kitchen table & it was white, and let him choose our polo cube bookcase in dark wood, which I'm not the biggest fan of. So today at the shops we came to an agreement that I could choose the bed, and he got to choose the rest of the things. I'm all kinds of excited! After the shops, we had a quick coffee and scone date before coming home.

And when we saw the family cat Gill, he begged me to be on my blog, so I caved. Happy Halloween guys!

Firstly, I hope you all enjoyed reading about my lovely October Sponsors throughout the week! They are a bunch of fantastic bloggers that you should all check out! I haven't been able to post/read much this week because so much has been going on. So heres a little catch up post..

This week has definitely been an interesting one! Luke & I began our week with some house hunting, which is always a stress free (not!) delight. And the houses we organised to view I went to by myself while Luke worked on the Tuesday. It started off being a rainy, dreadful looking week, and trying to look for houses while driving and googling all at once is not ideal. I even unfortunately ran over a bird, which I was not happy about. And as a result the family cat won't leave my car alone, it sure has broken up his day of sleeping in the sun and eating prawns with some awful excitement. And my lovely friend Lara came for a mid week sleep over, and then we went for coffee with my friend Holly on the Wednesday. Thursday we got a call bearing good news that we had been approved for a cute little two bedroom flat! So we move in mid November!

Friday Luke had the day off from work, so we went to the shops so I could get a new dress to wear to my friend Elisa's birthday dinner on Saturday. I was swayed by Lost Cabin's taco post during the week, so we had tacos & drinks while we watched 'Insidious' & 'The Room Mate'. Which was not a good idea before bed because I'm a scaredy cat, and I also had to get up super early for a job trial Saturday morning, which went super well by the way! I'm now a waitress at this cute little alternative cafe near my new flat! After my trial, Luke & I had cups of coffee & watched 'Daria' before I made my way to Newcastle to Elisa's birthday dinner. It was an interesting evening to say the least! I had a crumbed mushroom salad that was served with a massive knife, it was a salad sword! I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of the birthday girl herself, but she looked mega amazing in a lilac pin up dress.

After dinner I had evening coffees with Lara and Tim. I never have a dull moment around those two. Tim is basically a female version of Lara, which is amazing because she is my favourite person. I drove home later than I anticipated and left myself few hours to sleep before I had my first full shift on Sunday. It's such a fun cafe to work at, everybody is super nice and the customers, without me telling them, spoke to me using my name & asked about me because they knew I was new.

This week has brought forth a lot of positive ch-ch-ch-changessss, which I am more than happy about! So to finish off an interesting week, Luke & I had pizza with drinks, watched 'Daria' and went to bed early!

Last but definitely not least because she is all kinds of amazing, Melina who blogs over at Only A Flight Away. After following more than thirty blogs, she decided to start her own in July this year as a place of her own to put down her thoughts, stories & memories. Her adventures always look like fun nights out, and she always has a lovely thing to say. Stop by and say hi!

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Call me Melina. An Argentinian native living in Los Angeles, California. The girlfriend of an amazing boy called Sebastian. Loving, caring, sweet, honest, funny, and creative. Blow candles on April 20th. Addicted to Oreos. Camara in hand and I'll take a thousand pictures.

Welcome to Only A Flight Away. My little blog about my personal life, my long distance relationship, my friends, my family, and everything that revolves around me. You will find me having a margarita or baking a cake. Decorating the house or exploring new places. In three words my blog is MY ONLINE JOURNAL.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Alex started her blog Second Thoughts, as a creative outlet, and to forget about her pressing school schedule and real life. It's also her little space where she likes to share pretty stuff stuff she finds out there.

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Hello! My name is alex, I am 19 years old, and an engineering major with a huge creative side! I am just a girl with a wide range of interests! I love movies, music, photography, design, and oh, so many other things!

This blog is all about my creative and opinion outlet. Even though I am an engineering major, I have a creative side! And I'd just hate to let that go to waste. So this is the place where I share my daily inspirations, interests, and recommendations!

Rach, who blogs over at So, Hi is such a high school sweet heart. She really, really is! Her blog is light hearted and a down right delight! Visit her and say hi!

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My blog is pretty much everything going on in my brain. I love beauty, so you see a lot of that. I love life, you see a lot of that as well, and I love love. Guess what. You see that too. ;)

I started blogging back around this time last year. I started because I had so many idea's in my head and I was bored at school. Then I found out that it was something that I love doing, and it blossomed. :)

It is for those of you that love beauty, DIYs, and random fashion tips and tricks. :)

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Go check her out, and while you're there get a secret off your chest in her Saturday Secret's feature.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

My friend Lara came over for a mid week sleep over Tuesday, I'm considering Tuesday mid week as she caught the train after work and arrived at the Coast in the evening. I made us dinner, and burnt the accompanying spring rolls because I'm a bit of a chef. Obviously. We stayed up most of the evening with cups of tea, looking though super old photos. Lara is one person who you can lose hours talking to, we've known each other since we were little & we still never run out of things to talk about.

On Wednesday morning we woke up a little bit later than we should have, had power showers, an awesomely quick bowl of yogurt, cereal, walnuts & blueberries breakfast, then met up with my lovely friend Holly for a coffee date. We met earlier this year when we both worked for a construction magazine. She knows how to put an outfit together, and the funniest things come out of her mouth. Our little date went for a couple of hours, and afterwards I dropped Lara to the train station. I spent the afternoon filling out rental forms, which is always a super fun activity, and did some drawing.

Grace began the blog Her Umbrella as a creative outlet to share her secrets, stories, fun, & more specifically, the decorations of her life. She always has a nice thing to say, and is an absolute sweet heart!

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My name is Grace Fleming – insert “Lynne” when needed. Once December rolls around I’ll be graduating from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a B.A. in Communications. I’m from the outskirts of Nashville, TN and I couldn’t imagine calling anywhere else home. For as long as I can remember, I've been a lover of words and even more so, their meaning. I've always loved how you can make art with a simple phrase. I'm a lover of "pretty" and "gritty" - "delicious" and "different". I fancy myself a freelance creator, loving all things in the media and loving the work that goes behind it.

Her Umbrella is just a collection of my life’s little decorations – whether it’s a love for sampling the world, empty candy wrappers, books filled with scribbled ideas or stupid people that keep showing up – they’ve all found a place underneath, adorning everyday with a little more sparkle.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Loving the idea of making her own website to fill with special memories & such, Samantha started her blog, Everything In Between. She is such a sweet girl, and she also has amazing hair!

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I'm 19-years-old and live with my wonderful fiance (his name is Sam, also!) and our 3 rambunctious kittens in our home here in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Currently, I'm a stay-at-home girlfriend looking for a job. I spend my time blogging, doing web design related projects, and doing whatever else to keep myself busy.

Everything in Between is my little virtual world where I make sure to post things that I always want to remember & cherish. My posts range from being young and in love, planning a wedding, my life in general, and Everything in Between. My blog is still brand new but I hope you stick around to see where this blog of mine takes us!

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It's been such a treat having Samantha as a sponsor this month, and her blog is always a delight to read, especially her Thankful Thursday weekly feature. Go check her out!

I'm so excited for you all (if you haven't already) to meet Hannah from A Cup Of Subtle Tea . She is an absolute sweet heart with an adorable & inspiring blog. And I have been lucky enough to have her as a sponsor for October. Go check her out, she's such a babe! Hannah has a weekly 'Teal Tuesday' feature that is definitely one of my favourite blogging weekly features.

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I am a twenty-something girlfriend to a wonderful man, James, finding her way through a new city and making a place we can call home in Virginia. I am a crafter, baker, planner, DIY-er and all around silly pants enjoying life in this new city and spending way to much time inside.

A Cup Of Subtle Tea is my online diary and scrapbook. A place to keep in contact with family and friends back home. A place to share recipes, ideas and my passions. And a place to make new friends because who doesn't love making friends! It is my "life" style blog :)

Sunday, October 23, 2011

It's a bit crazy to be thinking about November, this year has gone way too quickly! October is about to rap up in just over a week, so I'm taking November Sponsorship now. Oh, and its free! I've got a handful of new faces that I'm super excited to share with you all! So if you're interested or have any questions, just send me an email - laurenemily[at]y7mail[dot]com

You can also read here for more info about free sponsorship on Tastes Like Love.

This week has been pretty busy, Luke & I are currently looking for a new house so we've been attending house viewings almost every day this week. We've found some really cute places, and some pretty disgusting ones. One of the last places we looked at wasn't an official type viewing, we picked up the keys and went to check it out ourselves. The first thing I thought was to get back in the car and drive in the opposite direction, and I should have. It was quiet big on the inside, but some of the bathroom facilities were equivalent to ones you might find in the jungle. And the neighbours seemed to have a home business of collecting rusty bikes, and attempting to fix them up. There were bikes everywhere! As we were leaving, the upstairs neighbour was watching us and she yelled at us a string of obscenities and warned us to not take the property. As if our minds weren't made up as it was!

In the midst of our rental endeavors, we tried out the new pancake cafe we drive past most days and say 'oh we need to go there'. So we did. And although the pancakes were nice, their coffee was horrible. Horrible is an understatement considering I'm such a coffee professional now! Luke ordered a breakfast pancake meal with eggs and all things breakfast. And I got bananarama pancakes, which should have been called diabetesrama. It was two pancakes with grilled banana drowned in caramel sauce. So thats another thing crossed off the list! I didn't really take many photos of our adventures this week, just the pancakes and eating vegetarian hot dogs.

I especially didn't want to take pictures of our awful cafe experience yesterday. Luke's boss mentioned a little while ago that there was a cafe that had really nice lentil burgers that we should try. And we decided to try them out yesterday as Luke started work a little earlier and got to have a decent lunch break. So I actually got to spend a couple of hours with him on a Saturday, which never happens. So I ordered an over priced lentil burger that was not overly impressive to look at. And not to eat either. The third bite contained a rock in the lentil patty! I had a rock in my mouth! It was absolutely disgusting! That put us both off our food, and the cafe. When we mentioned it they tried to pass it off as an uncooked lentil, as if after ten years of eating lentils I didn't know what an uncooked lentil looked like! Lentils don't come that big. So, our cafe experiences this week were disappointing, hopefully next week's are more pleasant!

Next week is going to be a little bit exciting, aside from more house viewings, it's my friend Elisa's birthday party, and I'm going to be posting about my October sponsors throughout the week!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

While looking for mine & Luke's birth certificates during the week, I found a bunch of exciting things packed up in boxes like horse stencils, animal printed note books, an alligator stapler, notebooks filled with inspiring craft and designs and some design projects from last year. One of my class projects from last year was to deconstruct illustrations and designs from throughout the year and arrange them into a black & white zine that would reflect us as designers. I took a giraffe from a past illustration, and came up with 'imagine all the necklaces you could wear if you were a giraffe', to accompany the giraffe. It was such a delight to see my zine after almost a year, I'd completely forgotten about it.

Today Luke & I ventured to Newcastle for an 11am tattoo appointment. Luke got the hottest tattoo of his child hood crush, Velma from Scooby Doo. I dropped him off at his appointment & met my dear friend Elisa at an old coffee house haunt for lattes and catch ups. It's been a month or two since I saw her last, and she's gone and got herself a cute straight fringe, and was sporting the most amazing nail polish, OPI crackle polish(check out her fingerrrr). She's one of the biggest babes I know.

After catch up lattes, I visited my lovely best friend Lara for cups of tea. We had two pots of tea; cinnamon & apple, and rosehip tea. They both were delightful, the cinnamon & apple would make for a perfect cup of ice tea. We spent most of the afternoon out together until Luke's tattoo was finished. We met up with Luke & checked out the controversial Laman Street Figs. Across from the art gallery in Newcastle is the most beautiful row of fig trees that provide the most picturesque city park, it truly is a beautiful spot. And for the past year or so there has been great controversy surrounding the figs as the council deems them a hazard, and therefor need to be removed. The figs are quiet a prominent Newcastle feature and the Newcastle Folk really do not want to part with them, and have so far been successful in saving them, however, last week they began turning them into wood chips. The overwhelming amount of protesters caused the demolition to cease action for a while, and since the first few branches were destroyed there have been peaceful demonstrations to encourage fig support. So we went down to the figs and there was a committed bunch of fig folk encouraging Newcastle drivers to 'honk' if they like trees. There were horns going off left, right & center!

Afterwards we picked up some take away lattes & Luke & I made our way back to the coast in peak hour traffic. We finished off our lovely day with a pick-a-little-plate for dinner and drinks.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Last night my Mum (Ju) & I attended a barista course so we could become pro's at making coffees. All learning aside, it was all kinds of fun & interesting. Ju is already down with the business of making coffee, she came along to brush up on her skills & so I wasn't going by myself. It was a really great night, there were about 6 other coffee enthusiasts & everyone picked the basics up pretty quickly. It was a three hour class, which flew by super quickly. I think I'm going to have to go to the second class to get the knack of lattes down pat incase I have to make anything other than a flat white for somebody!

My sister Ashleigh came to visit over the weekend. Her husband went away for the weekend and she ''didn't want to cook dinner'', so she came to visit and have dinner with us on Friday night! Ash, Mum & I went for breakfast at one of my favourite cafes on the Coast, Two Birds Gallery Cafe. It's the daintiest little shop/cafe that sells local hand made jewellery, art, books and an assortment of delicate gift wares. They always have a vase full of fresh local lavender on their tables, which I'm now a fan of since Ashleigh's wedding. She had them for her wedding bouquets. Luke & I have been regular customers the past couple of weeks because they have a killer cappuccino & use bright red tea cups!

It's been a rainy-boxsets & tea-in-bed sort of Long Weekend here at the Coast. Luke had to work most of it, finishing early Sunday afternoon. We made the most amazing lasagna last night for dinner with drinks and Big Love season four. Today it cleared up nice and proper and we went for a little lovers stroll along the beach & had coffee + cheesecake at one of our favourite cafes, Two Birds Gallery. Afterwards we came home and tidied up and finished the long weekend off with left over lasagna, the x-factor and drinks.